Spaces
by Miss Aldridge
Summary: Young Dick Grayson isn't sure what to make of his new home.


Spaces

By Miss Aldridge

Disclaimer: These characters all belong to DC comics, who keep them in a bottled city and spy on them. You think they're comics, but they're actually detailed reports.

Author's Notes: Just a bit of messing around with ideas really. This was written at eight in the morning when I was staying over a friend's on her spare bed. The room was huge with not much furniture and a lot of bare flooring. It was weird.

The two parts here don't exactly fit together, but are linked by theme. Don't ask me where the tenses are going. I'm still not overly happy with my portrayal of Dick and Tim together, but I'm working on it.

Part One.

It's the vast spaces in Wayne Manor that get to the young Dick Grayson. Huge rooms with expanses of carpet between each piece of furniture, driftwood loose and untethered. He finds it unnerving. There's just no getting his head round the empty spaces. They look strange.

Back home –what had been his home, before his parents, well, you know- there was never an inch to spare. The trailer was what his mom called "organised chaos", his dad "a right mess", and Dick "normal". He didn't think you were meant to see the carpet, let alone know what colour it was (possibly yellow, though darkened with stains and age). Moving around the small trailer was an exercise in finding bare patches of carpet to step between, not that the objects on the floor were considered dangerous water. In the absence of any more cupboards, the floor had simply become, as a necessity, another storage area.

Alfred doesn't approve of this method. "Clothes belong in the wardrobe or the washbasket, Master Dick," he says in his absolutely firm, no nonsense, there's-no-arguing-with-me voice. He scares Dick a little. The idea of having someone around simply to tell you off is odd, in his opinion. Back in the circus people had told him off, obviously, but that was different, they didn't follow you around with the express purpose of doing so. It isn't fair. Big spaces are just made to be moved around in, not just walking around on one level either.

But the big open spaces in Wayne Manor are still no match for the circus field or the big top. There are exciting-looking obstacles about the place, but these come accompanied with an eyebrow lift and a tongue cluck. And the spaces here have no exciting people in them, no rubber men to tie themselves casually in a knot to amuse any watching boy, no animals to watch (spiders didn't count and don't last long anyway with Alfred on the prowl with his feather duster). There's just a small boy adrift on an empty floor.

There's always the game, when no eyes are watching, of traversing the room without touching the floor at all (rugs count as floor though). It's tricky, of course, but the young explorer is more than up to it. Picture rails high on the wall are always useful, while cabinets have to be watched for fragile items, the smash of which would undoubtedly bring Alfred running, if he ever actually runs at all. Dick has only ever seen him walk with measured pace, though there have definitely been some more harassed motions lately. Dick knows it's mean, but he can't help feeling just that little bit satisfied.

Wayne Manor isn't a bad place to live, he supposes. It's just different. Very different, but his parents would have wanted him to at least try and fit in. Maybe he will get used to it, but then again, another part of his mind whispers, maybe he won't. You could have wheeled his parents' trailer into most of these rooms and still have had room for Bertha the fat lady to run around. Dick doesn't feel like he fits either, that he's rattling around with nothing to do. And he doesn't know what'll make him fit.

Part Two.

"You know, I've never really thought about this before," said Tim, "but why is your room so much smaller than all the others in the manor?"

He was draped over a beanbag on the floor of the room in question. Dick, whose room it was, lay on his front on the bed, chin resting on his arms.

"Is it?" he asked. "I hadn't really noticed."

Tim made a disbelieving noise.

"Or I hadn't really thought about it," amended Dick. "Not recently anyway. It just is."

"Bruce try to fob you off with the smallest room he could, did he?" asked Tim.

"Oh no." Dick rolled over onto his back. "He originally put me in one of the bigger rooms up the corridor. The green one."

"Then why'd you end up here?"

"I didn't like the space. It was too big."

Tim raised an eyebrow at his big brother. "Too big? Little Dicky got agoraphobia?"

A pillow thwacked him on the ear. "Watch it, squirt," warned Dick.

"Why then? Why was it too big?" Tim hurled the pillow back.

Dick caught it in mid-air. "It just was. I was used to a trailer, all cramped up with three of us in it. Suddenly I'm in this huge barn, and it ain't half different. I couldn't sleep in the room I first had. I used to take the blanket and sleep under the bed, just to get rid of that huge space around me."

Tim considered this. "Bet that panicked Alfred."

Dick grinned. "It did. He couldn't find me anywhere. Thought I'd snuck out or got lost in one of the corridors or something. That's when he and Bruce decided to move me into here. That, and," –here Dick's grin grew wider- "there's less spaces for me to climb up and get footmarks in unreachable places in here. I swear, there's still places around the manor with my footprints up in the corners where Alfred couldn't reach to clean them off." He paused. "At least, there were before the quake."

"That's kind of cute," said Tim, just to be infuriating. "Ickle Dicky,not wanting to sleep in the big bad open space."

"I'm going to ignore that comment and hope you remember that you're older than five," retorted Dick. "Anyway, I was used to having my parents right nearby. Bruce and Alfred were … rather more distant than that. At least at first. And they're neither of them, well, you know."

Tim left his beanbag to sit on the bed. He hugged Dick impulsively.

"Hey, what was that for?" asked Dick, surprised but not displeased.

"It just felt like you needed it," said Tim. "I can just sense these things."

"That wasn't in Bruce's training programme."

"Hah, no." Tim was quiet for a moment. "What about the Cave, anyway? I mean, that's enormous."

"That's different. That's more like," Dick gestured with his hands, "a performance space. Like the big top."

"Complete with an audience of bats. I'm sure they were appreciative."

"Y'know, if you spook them and they go flying off, it sounds a bit like applause."

Tim only laughed and flicked at Dick's hair to irritate him. Dick retaliated by mussing Tim's up completely, and that was all it took to turn into a wrestling match, which only ended when the bed began to creak rather alarmingly. They flopped to lie side by side.

"I still think it's cute, you know," said Tim breathlessly.

"Oh well, forgive me for not being normal like everyone else round here."

"Don't worry, Dick," replied Tim gleefully. "You're far from normal…"

Another wrestling match ensued, this one quickly moving to the floor to spare the bedframe. Around them the house was mostly quiet and empty, but the big open spaces were friendlier now, having all at least once been filled with the sound of laughter, and not only that of a child.

End.


End file.
